Middle Country: Winter
There’s a lot of middle country out there, especially during ski season, and it contains many of my favorite slopes, glades, and forested hideaways. I can’t tell you exactly where to find this amorphous locale, but I suspect that your part of the world has plenty. Besides, this concept isn’t as much about the map as much as it is about your approach to being in the mountains. It’s taken me a while to find it, but now that I’m onto middle country I’m having some of the best days of my outdoor career.
As I figure it, the middle country lies beyond the chaos of the trailheads, but short of the big steeps. It’s a quiet, peaceful, and clean place, once you get beyond the majority of gym rats and day-trippers and dogs. You can often have the forest to yourself and maybe a clean slope where you can lay down first tracks midday. Since it’s so thinly populated, you won’t have to make excuses to passers-by when you stop in the trail to inspect some wonder of natural science. Heck, if you’re lucky there may not BE a trail. But in pulling up short of the big stuff, you suddenly open up a whole lot of possibilities. You have less worry about claiming a ski line or wondering if those guys above you are about to trigger the whole mountainside down on your head. You can wander at will, with as much focus and determination as you want. You can keep lots and lots of terrain all to yourself. And that private country, with all the open mental space it creates, always makes me happy.
I think you can define a ski trip, in part, by what would be the perfect gear for the conditions. But that gear also says a lot about what you want to DO while you’re there.
The first trips that my partners and I made into the Sierra Nevada backcountry, way back in the early 70s, were on Madshus Birkebeiners (wood, 210s, 40mm underfoot, lignite edges, breakable), three-pin bindings, and 4” leather boots. Yes, I’m that old. This was a perfect set-up for gliding around in the forest, but god save you if you needed anything but a step turn. Once we got serious about climbing stuff and bagging some winter ascents, we moved up to Bonna 2400s (beefier wood, double-cambered, still 210s, segmented steel edges underfoot) with Silveretta or Emory bindings, and 8” leather mountaineering boots. This set-up gave us what we thought was an ultimate ability to ski the big stuff, but of course those lines weren’t that big by current standards. All through the 80s and 90s we bought in to the best-in-class mountaineering skis as they were developed (composite, short and shovel-nosed, responsive, and mostly unbreakable). But I’ve pulled up short of moving into the current crop of full-fledged AT gear, four-buckle boots, and DIN-rated bindings. My resistance is not to cost (though really? $1000 for a set of bindings? I’ve spent less on trucks). I cannot deny that the current crop of equipment, if coupled with decent skills, will allow many folks to ski just about any line they can lay their eyes on. It really is impressive the stuff that the best skiers among us do these days, and I salute their accomplishments.
But for me, it’s just that there is so much else to DO out there in the woods.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like to cut perfect turns on fresh snow as much as anyone. I like a good alpine challenge, too: picking a ridge, finding a classic line, laying down a perfect skin track up, chopping through the bergschrund if you must, grabbing a summit if you can, and finding a safe place to drop in and descend. I adore the act of harvesting all that altitude in a pretty set of linked turns. But my trouble is that I have a short attention span, and I have a range of other outdoor interests that go beyond making turns. When I’m up in the mountains, I want to drink in as much of that place as I can, to learn what’s up there, to hang out and see what’s going on when no one is looking. I want to be a part of the place, and to stick around long enough to understand a little about that particular part of the world. I like to stop and look at trees and frozen creeks and squirrel middens. I’m super content clomping through deadfall, scooching across snow bridges, and sneaking in a few turns where they present themselves. Heck I hope one day to find evidence that a bear is sleeping underfoot as I pass by. That would be a thrill!
Get Chris Dorsi’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
As for my current ski kit? These days it’s middle of the-road boards such as the Atomic Chugach or G3 Xenoxide (180s, 80–90 underfoot, single camber), various versions of releasable telemark bindings such as Black Diamond 01 or Voile Switchbacks, scales and skins, and light two- or three-buckle boots (remember T3s?). This light and durable set-up allows me to travel in the mountains as if I live there, which I do. When I kick off my skis to set up camp I can still walk around like a normal human being. And I don’t spend much on gear: heck I retrieved my current favorite skis from a neighbor’s art fence where he had turned them out to pasture.
So maybe it turns out that I’m more of an explorer and naturalist than an athlete.
I was, after all, raised back in the 60s on Rachel Carson and Aldo Leapold, and have ever since followed their lessons of immersion in nature. I’m that guy who is inexplicably stopped in the middle of the forest, dissecting an owl pellet, identifying an odd type of moss, and drinking hot stuff from a canteen. And when the uber-skiers rush by I’ll be shouting encouragement as they head to the steeps. There’ll be times when I wish I was going with them to share those high-spirited adventures. But most of the time I’ll stay behind, putter around, and cut a few low-slope turns. I may spend the night up there, and when everyone else is back at the brewery sharing high-fives, I’ll be at the edge of a little park, howling at the stars and trying to figure out how things work in the mountains at night. I’ll have the entire basin to myself and I’ll survive until morning. And when the next crop of fresh faces climbs past my camp–say between 7:00 and 10:00 the next morning–I probably won’t join them. For one thing, I probably couldn’t keep up. But more importantly, I’ll have a lot to do down in my private part of the world, in that middle country that’s too far from the trailhead for most people and just a ski-through for those who are headed to the top. I’m going to run around all day up there and look at stuff, and if friends come up I’ll have plenty to show them. If I’m lucky I’ll catch sight of those other hard-core skiers way up in the slots and couloirs on the ridge. We’ll each have room to roam, in our own ways, and they likely won’t even know I’m there. We’ll stay out of each other’s way, I’ll get to practice my own quiet version of woodsmanship, and our small town mountain culture will feel to me like it’s in proper balance. I’m going to call that a happy win!
###
